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Book One: Escape From Verdanta

Book Two: The Rings of Baraboo

Book Three: The Battle of Crestival

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR RANDY MORRISON:

The first draft of Seven Moon Circus was nearly complete when I stumbled upon a newspaper story about Reinhold Rau, the founder of The Quagga Project. That group aims to revive the quagga, an extinct zebra. “By selective breeding from a selected founder population of Southern Plains Zebra an attempt is being made to retrieve at least the genes responsible for the quagga’s characteristic (brown and tan) striping pattern.” As I learned more about this project (http://www.quaggaproject.org/), I became deeply fascinated by the real possibility of revival from extinction, whether by selective breeding or cloning or other forms of bio-engineering. Eventually I dumped much of the original story line and rewrote the story to make a quagga, revived from extinction, one of the new stars of the space-traveling circus.

Teachers and parents can use the quagga element of the story to introduce important life science themes and concepts, such as extinction, revival, bio-engineering, species and subspecies, and how the discovery of DNA helps us understand life. This “de-extinction” topic would make a great critical thinking activity, encouraging your young readers to do some research, weigh the pros and cons, and then reach and defend their opinion about whether we should revive extinct species.

I sincerely hope all readers, whether they are students or not, will find Seven Moon Circus a fun read, and also a gateway to learning, creative thinking, and future possibilities.